Here's the roles we're planning on taking during the pyweek competition

• Design: blakeohare
• Programming: blakeohare and Falun
• Art: Falun and Spears Dracona.
• Music: dmcginty23 and ikanreed
• Support: BrettS,

Relevant Links:

• Project wiki: https://nppw.pbworks.com
• Source Control Repository: svn.magichappyplace.com/nppw

I've gone through a number of ideas today (Including the one detailed in my last post). I've been all over the place, and haven't gotten a whole lot done today.

However, I finally have an idea that I like and think will be very fun.

The game is titled "Component Fortress".

It takes place in an endless level that is composed of individual rooms that are generated according to templates.

The world takes the form of a zig-zagging series of floors, which are generated as the player progresses.

The templates for rooms will be stored in XML documents that will support a variety of features.

There will be multiple weapons, 3 playable characters (One man, one woman, and one robot), and high scores.

I've got a good feeling about this one. I like it alot. :)

I think it's going to be a fun one...

--Akake

I've abandoned my physics game concept as Squirtle and Pymunk can't agree about coordinates for vertices on paths/polygons.

Yesterday, I had a friend of mine give me a theme at 3:00PM EST (Which, since daylight savings time is coming up here in the states, will be 4:00PM EDT by the time this warmup challenge is over), and two weeks.

So, by 4:00PM EDT on the 26th I must have my game completed. (The 26th is also my 20th birthday, incidentally, and I think a success on my 20th would be a nice present :D)

The theme my friend gave me is "Building Blocks".

I've decided to dodge the obvious toy-land themes and the block puzzles, and head for more interesting territory.

My game is titled "RoboLegion".

It is a takeoff from Robocode, a game where you write an AI for a combat robot.

In RoboLegion, you write the AI for an army of robots that fights against other armies of robots. It is turn-based, and you have no direct control over your army once the battle begins.

I'm justifying using my theme like so: Units are modular, and are composed of a body, a turret, and an AI script. In addition, structures have their own AI, and some hold turrets that the structure's AI can operate.

Any turret can be placed onto any turret slot. This includes worker turrets. That means that turrets on buildings can build further structures. Also, any AI script can be placed into any unit or structure, even where it would be useless. I'm not going to stop the player from being stupid, and I'm not going to stop the player from being clever.

The game will have options to limit the number of scripts that can be used by a player, and the size of those scripts (Individually and/or total).

It will support up to 8 factions in a single battle, as well.

It's a big plan, but I'm hoping that I can pull it off.

(If not, I will hopefully find it in me to work on it more after the compo!)

Here's hoping...

--Akake

I think I've got all the drama out of my system now, so I've given the problem some rational thought.

I spent a bit of time hitting the SVG Output preferences in Inkscape with a hammer, and, having failed that, gave up for a while.

Then, I started anew, thinking that I could step back in and get this beast to work. Apparently, Inkscape applies new output preferences fully only to new files, or so it seems.

So... Well, I got the stupid thing to work.

With that, I'm hoping to have something basically playable by the end of Saturday. (This is allowing time for problems with Pymunk, problems making Squirtle paths into Pymunk polygons, and problems getting the player to control correctly)

I need to stop trying to solve technical problems early in the morning...

---Akake

I really wanted to do this physics game, but I just can't get Squirtle to work properly, as my Inkscape seems to be broken.

I'm really frustrated. I can't get Inkscape to produce usable output, and I don't think I can fix it.

I'm trying to control myself right now as I'm very upset, but I'm really unsure of what to do right now.

I'm sorry, but I just can't do this. I don't know how to get Inkscape to produce what Squirtle needs, and without Squirtle I can't do what I set out to do.

I know most folks seem to be able to use Inkscape output as-is, but I get output that I can't use.

I'm really sorry...

--Akake

I've started on my next warmup game. Well, technically not a PyWeek warmup proper, but it's a game nonetheless.

I've given myself until 5PM (EST) on the 28th to finish a physics platformer with Inkscape levels.

I'll be using Pymunk for the physics, and Squirtle for SVGs functionality. Baddies and many props will be physics-enabled, as will the player. All physical props will be created in the level file, and the level file will contain funky layers for fancy things like... Well just about anything I can get Pymunk to do in that short span of time.

The premise (At least gameplay-wise) is that the player is a little bouncy ball sort of creature that can roll around and bounce. (Two things which don't sound far-fetched for a bouncy ball to do, I think) In addition, the player can jump a bit and affect their elasticity. Normally, the player bounces a bit, but not much, but when holding the "bounce" key, they become very bouncy and actually gain a bit of speed when they bounce off of things.

Baddies take damage depending on forces they are subject to, and all baddies have a minimum force below which they take no damage whatsoever. Some baddies are able to fly, and will fall a bit when hit hard enough.

There will be two playable characters again. A female character who is very light (Less damage to baddies) but bounces higher, and a male character who is very heavy but doesn't bounce as high. These two probably won't be as radically different as Rachel and Jack from GunFox.

I'm hoping to have something to demonstrate physics-wise by Friday.


Here's hoping...

---Akake

I'm very interested in reducing load times for Pyweek games. I like to jump right into the action. So I tried an experiment. I have a 3-D model with 60 frames that takes about 20 seconds to load into pyOpenGL. So my experiment was to just load 4 frames of the animation to start with, and then add the rest as you go along. I'm guessing you shouldn't generate a GL list in one thread while rendering the scene in another, so all the loading has to take place between game frames. Each animation frame, though, takes about 300ms to generate into a GL list, and that's way too long to stick into a single game frame. But I found out that you can chain together a sequence of GL lists, and it works just as well. So each animation frame comprises 20 GL lists, and each game frame, one of these lists gets generated. I'm still not very familiar with GL optimizations, though, so this might not be the way to go.

I'm pretty satisfied with the result. The framerate and load times are about the same whether you preload it or load it during the action. It starts off pretty jittery as you'd expect, but I think it's a good tradeoff. For an actual game, it would be better, because you'll have more than one action. No need to load the shooting frames before the game begins, if you'll have plenty of time before the player even gets a gun.

Anyway, just thought I'd share. Anyone with more GL experience is welcome to give me tips! :)

motion demo

I have succeeded!

GunFox version 1.0 is complete!

Now, the game has scoring, and can store up to 20 high scores!

Entries in the high score menu are also colored based on which character the player was using. Blue for Jack and green for Rachel.

I'll write a post-mortem later on today, but for now, I'm just happy that I've succeeded.

You can pick up a copy here!

I'm comfortable calling this a release.

This version adds a title screen, titles for the character and difficulty selection menus, and changes the background color to something more fitting of a warehouse, and that also has more of a contrast with the level's contents. There are now proper gauges as well, so the ugly fill rectangles are finally gone!

I've put in the other three baddie types that I had planned.

There are pistol baddies that run almost as fast as Rachel and can jump four tiles high, but only have half as much health as a rifle baddie. They fire in short bursts, and their guns do half as much damage as a rifle baddie's.

There are also grenade baddies that run about as fast as Jack and also jump about four tiles high. They have 3/4 as much health as a rifle baddie. They throw grenades at you whenever you're in range. Their grenades have a two second timer, and do a fairly large amount of damage if you are caught in the blast. Grenades will also knock you around a bit if you are caught in the blast. They have the neat effect of flushing you out of cover, as grenades are often used in real combat. (Or, more like real life, kill you if you aren't able to climb out of your hole quick enough!)

Finally, there are bazooka baddies. These jump about as high as rifle baddies, but move at about half as fast. Their rockets do a great deal of damage, and throw you around if you are caught in the blast. These rockets do about double damage on direct hits as compared to you simply being caught in the splash. They have twice as much health as rifle baddies, and are fairly rare.

Tomorrow, I'm going to add scoring, high score saving, and then... My God! After I've done that... I've succeeded!

I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

You can pick up a copy of the new release here!

Registrated...

kthxbye